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Lots of votes still to count in San Francisco -- as of this morning, the Department of Elections said there were about 80,000 absentee and provisional ballots in the hopper. But some have been counted yesterday and today, and we can draw some conclusions.

Typically election-day absentees break fairly close to the way election-day votes break, and Kamala Harris is citing that -- and her campaign's own analysis -- to claim victory;Read more »

Right now, D10 watchers are driving themselves crazy trying to predict the ranked choice math in a 22-candidate race. And so far it looks like it’s a toss-up between Tony Kelly, Lynette Sweet and Malia Cohen, with Steve Moss and Marlene Tran trailing in fourth and fifth place in a contest in which race, neighborhood and inter-campaign alliances will likely prove to be the decisive factors.Read more »

As soon as it became clear on election night that Prop. L had passed, I wondered if opponents would organize some sort of mass sit-down or sleep-in as a response. Today, it appears that some San Franciscans are orchestrating just that. I've been alerted via Facebook to two different sidewalk sits in response to the passage of Prop. L. Read more »

Sipping an egg cream soda is an all-American, very New York pastime, but nowadays the nostalgic sodas are popping up in increasing numbers in our fair city. I rounded up a trifecta of perfect SF spots to get your cream on, but first a historical rundown.

Though the identity of the creator of the original egg cream is somewhat debated, many credit Louis Auster, a Brooklyn candy store owner in the late 1800s. In his well-researched tome on the history of soda fountains, Fix the Pumps, Art of the Drink's Darcy S. O'Neil says the New York egg cream evolved as a variation on the original milkshakes served at soda fountains in the late 19th century. Read more »

It might have been unannounced, but there’s a ritual aspect to all this the Giants-Halloween-Dia de los Muertos mayhem all the same. And like any great autumnal rite, the cathartic frenzy implies a greater narrative -- one last big harvest before the little death of winter, the rebirth of spring. How appropriate to the season then, was the Ragged Wing production “Persephone’s Roots” a site-specific re-imagining of the Persephone myth at Berkeley’s Cordornices Park. Read more »

Mayor Gavin Newsom seemed to jokingly endorse Giants closer Brian Wilson for mayor at the parade Nov. 3rd (and Wilson might have endorsed his BDSM-loving neighbor), but maybe the mayor's words have been misinterpreted. Maybe he was referring to another local player when he proclaimed the words "fear the beard." Just a thought.

With four of the five Board of Supervisors races awaiting ranked-choice voting tallies, the San Francisco Department of Elections says it will run a preliminary ranked choice voting tally tomorrow (Friday) afternoon.

The department says there are still at least 52,000 ballots left to count (14,000 provisional ballots and 38,000 absentee ballots dropped off at the polls), plus an unknown number of absentee ballots still arriving by mail, so tomorrow won't be the final word on who wins. But it will give a good idea where people's second choices are going.Read more »

OK somewhere between Giants madness and the election frenzy, this happened: one of our favorite, uniquely SF civic holidays went down in the Mission. Photographer Charlie Russo was there to capture all the morbid beauty, serene remembrance, and ghoulish fun.

As Mayor Gavin Newsom prepares to leave San Francisco for the Lieutenant Governor's Office in Sacramento, he has burned enough bridges here that he's not going to have much of a role in picking his successor. But he made a play today during the Giants World Series celebration at City Hall that just may resonate with local voters and elected officials alike.Read more »

You can draw -- or not draw -- all sorts of conclusions about the meaning of last night's national election, but I can tell you what the state and local results mean: A season of political madness. As of the first week in January, San Francisco will have a new mayor and (probably) a new district attorney, and neither will be elected by the voters. And if some pundits are correct and Nancy Pelosi decides to retire rather than taking a seat on the back bench, then a once-in-a-lifetime change to take a safe seat in Congress will open up. And man, will the mad scramble be on.Read more »

Steve Moss spent a lot of money -- and had a lot of money spent on his behalf -- but at this point is in 4th place in the D10 race. Not out of the running -- none of the top four contenders, Moss, Tony Kelly, Malia Cohen and Lynette Sweet, are finished, since ranked-choice voting will decide the outcome and anything could happen -- but he's certainly not in a commanding position. And he's not being a good sport about it.Read more »

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Unfortunately, as we all know – or should know – working women generally make less than working men, currently 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. But now come new census figures showing that in at least one regard, women are forging ahead of their male counterparts. They're doing much better than men among higher paid workers.

It turns out that the number of women with six-figure incomes is rising at a much faster pace than is the number of men making six-figure incomes. Read more »

Bucking a national conservative, anti-government political trend, San Franciscans stayed with some fairly progressive politics on election night, rejecting a measure to demonize public employees (Prop. B), giving progressive John Rizzo far more votes than his City College of San Francisco board rivals, and taking far more liberal positions in state ballot measures and candidates than California voters, who were already far to the left of national voters. Read more »